New cigarettes coming to the market

Have you never wondered why a rolled cigarette burns more slowly than a factory-made one? Some rolling papers are already manufactured to fire safety standards: a slower burn that stops the cigarette from carrying on burning when it is not being drawn on.

And that standard is now going to apply to every cigarette in Europe. From 17 November 2011, all cigarettes manufactured and sold in the European Union must be FSC: fire-safe cigarettes, which go out if they are forgotten or dropped somewhere…

How does it work?

The method most often used by manufacturers is the outer wrapper. The cigarette is wrapped with two or three very thin bands of very dense, non-porous paper that slow the burn. If the smoker does not draw on it, these bands stop the cigarette burning.

What is the point?

Cigarettes are behind a high proportion of fire outbreaks, whether in the home or outdoors. It is enough to fall asleep in front of the television with a lit cigarette in your mouth and for it to fall onto the floor or the bedding to start a fire. A cigarette end thrown away in the countryside can be the start of a fire covering several hundred hectares of forest, or destroying houses.
So there is an environmental angle on the one hand, much in vogue in the smoking accessories trade, with the OCB filters described as biodegradable and organic hemp paper.

On the other hand, this measure may be hoped to save lives. According to official figures, more than 6,000 people were caught in fires caused by cigarettes in 2005, 295 of whom died and 728 of whom were seriously injured. This new fire-safe cigarette measure should therefore limit the number of such disasters…

Nothing but advantages?

A good many questions remain to be asked about this new standard:

• Will the cigarettes not be harder to draw on?
• By thickening the paper, will the anti-burn bands not concentrate the tar?
• Will the bands taste the same as the paper?

Open to question, open to debate: let us know what you think….